Si Profile

I’m trying to take a break from posting stuff, but what the hell, I’ll give this one a stab.

Awesome Si profile--I relate a lot to most of it!

Yes!


I relate to this: sometimes I can literally do this. But my memory of past events is better in the longer-term sense.



Hahaha, yes!


Yes, unfortunately. Especially when people cheat or bully others with impunity and get away scot-free… yet it seems like this very sort of Si bitterness is a lot of how/why feuds drag on for centuries. For me, an effective way of mollifying these sorts of long-standing resentment is by remembering that all historical events are interwoven, that everything ultimately has consequences both good and bad, and that bitterness begets bitter outcomes. Yet even more important is remembering that “it is what it is”—the past can’t be changed and is not real in the same way the present is real.


I do have a few miscellaneous thoughts & ideas:

Temperance and path-dependence

Ostensibly I don’t completely relate to the section about temperance, as I often get drawn into the “chaos of spontaneity.” If it turns out I’m an NeTi, this is no surprise. However, when I try to think more deeply about the idea of temperance & caution based on accumulated experience, I actually do relate to it more than it would outwardly seem. But either way, it seems like there are plenty of examples of high Si users who are pretty wild-crazy and immoderate, as I’ve been at times in the past. I suspect this can be related lightweight inertia and path dependence. What I mean by path dependence here is that if an Si-lead grows accustomed to excess for one reason or another, that might become their default state and there might actually be resistant against changing or moving away from a life of excess. This can be accompanied by a fatalism rooted in past experience: feeling like you’re stuck in the same narrative you have been your whole life and are unable to break free from it.

Si and sensation

Perhaps this would belong in the cognitive metabolism section, but I think it would be cool if there were more about the connection of Si to senses, since it is a sensing function. You frequently use the word visceral in describing Si, and it’s a good word that captures how I’d understand Si’s sensing process. My only suggestion would be to explain its visceral quality in a little bit more detail. Si may not literally perceive the outward environment, but I believe it does literally perceive the inward environment (i.e. the inner body or the viscera). As Si recalls strings of trivia based on the memories of Ne’s outward perception, it also remembers the somatic impressions that are associated with those particular sets of trivia. That’s sort of my impression of how nostalgia works. If I were to see someone playing the original Mario Brothers, the particular combination of colors, textures and music would likely evoke a sensory experience along the lines of “this is what it felt like to be me when I was 7 or 8 years old.” I might remember other sensory/emotional experiences I had at around that time. Similarly, even if I can’t remember any specific details of what a painting I once saw looks like, I might still retain a somatic imprint of what it felt like to see the painting: i.e. the impression it left on me.

Nostalgia and sensory memory

There’s part of me that also feels like maybe nostalgia is too specific of a word to encapsulate the Si’s relationship to past sensory experiences. I really like the terms “sensory memory” or “feeling-memory”—I feel like they signify something a little bit broader than nostalgia. I think at times in my life I’ve felt reactive against nostalgia, like coddling nostalgias means confining myself to stagnation and accepting that whatever I feel in the present is only a weak derivative of what I felt in the past. Like nostalgia, what I’d call sensory memory involves feeling that the sensory reality of present has a powerful resonance with feelings & senses of the past (along the lines of what was mentioned in the section about narrativism). But whereas nostalgia seems to imply valuing the present sensory reality primarily for its quality as an echo of an (often idealized) past, I think sensory memory can involve valuing the sensory present as the continuation of a living history that began in the past.

Sensory empathy

Also, whereas nostalgia generally implies fond memories, I feel like sensory memory can just as easily involve traumatic ones.




Old things, narrativism and material culture: process vs. product


I’m not sure if I quite have my ideas on this bundled coherently together, but I’ll give it a try. This might be my own particular priority or interpretation, but I see Si narrativism as having as much to do with the cultural processes that produce and give meaning to the objects as with the literal histories of the objects themselves.

For instance, I have an antique coffee-grinder that I consider a prized possession. Although I don’t really know its history, it really does evoke/symbolize an older time to me. Yet its symbolism is much more powerful when I actually use it than when I simply leave it to sit on the shelf as a museum piece. Using it is not only a way of engaging with its historical significance, but also a way of reflecting on the energy, resources and human labor it takes to grow, harvest, transport and market the coffee beans. The fact that I rarely use it indicates that as a modern person, I live a fast-paced life in which exotic commodities like coffee are prepared in a matter of seconds and not always consumed mindfully. So, just as an example, pretend my hand coffee-grinder were brand-new and had no history behind it, but it was something I used all the time. It still would be a slower, more deliberate way of living, and in that sense it would still evoke an older time. So I'd say a lot of its significance is based not only on its particular history but also on its position within the flow of life in our culture.

I think this is one of the reasons why handmade, local products and local foods can have such strong significance. Even if they aren’t historical, they’re narrative: I likely know the person who made them, can readily learn about the process of making them, perhaps know the places where the materials were from. The process of making such goods is not only local but also personal. In that way, even modern trends like the local food movement hearken back to a time when there was less alienation between work, workers, owners, products and consumers. I would see such local economic endeavors as a way of trying to continue or reclaim the values of local production, local goods, and products derived more directly from the Earth. Rather than being motivated solely by nostalgia, they seek to re-imagine and re-create very old traditions that were disrupted by industrialization.

Fidelity of memory

Just one last random thought. One thing I’ve long noticed about memory is that it the details & impressions seem to get distorted over time. In fact, I'm pretty sure the more often I remember something, the more abstracted the memory becomes from the original quality of the experience. This makes sense in terms of Ne’s caricaturing methodology. Every time a memory gets “animated” to life by Ne, it loses a little bit of its original nuance and texture. Sort of like the grooves on a record getting worn out over time.

I also really enjoyed this Si profile Auburn and was impressed by how well it captured my husband and a good friend, and also surprised at how much I found myself relating to the descriptions.


While I don’t see myself as a heavy Si user, I like to identify flowers and other plants and have been known to share this info with others in an enthusiastic way, and looking back, may have been a bit boring to others! Knowing them gives me a sense of connection to the natural world and it’s also anchoring to me, and when I’m sharing that, I feel like I’m bestowing the same anchoring gift on others.

The section about collections and antiquity I very much relate to and prefer the old to the new as it connects me to another story in time, even if I don’t know that story. Kahawa pointed out that my attachment to libraries might be Si, and I agree and so relate to Aqua when she says she loves libraries and books. I love paper books - preserving, cataloging and lending them. Ahhh… Also, I connected with what Hrafn said about old things, particularly his coffee grinder example and the way that interacting with it evokes the past and is a symbol that represents something about culture and values. I once had a (short) season where I washed all of our clothes by hand because I wanted to understand the energy and time it would take to do that and so relate to the past and like hrafn said “seek to re-imagine and re-create very old traditions that were disrupted by industrialization.”

Also Hrafn , this idea of sensory empathy is something I’d never thought of. I’m now investigating my internal experience because I suspect I experience this type of empathy as well, and think it could be a helpful distinction to make:

However, sometimes I actively try to avoid re-feeling what I’ve felt in the past because the feelings that I had then are then presently felt on so many levels...perhaps also on this level of sensory empathy. (Perhaps this is more specific to the FiNe experience...idk)  It can be a bit much, particularly if at present I’m already experiencing a lot of other current feelings.

Thank you Auburn! I've enjoyed our exchanges as well!
I agree with this, and I didn't mean to imply otherwise! It's more just I haven't really used the internet in exactly this way before--actively participating in a forum (I can be a bit of a luddite, in case you didn't get that picture already). So it's more just a matter of reflecting on and figuring out what I'm personally most comfortable with when it comes to engaging with an online community.

The other thing I didn't mention earlier is that my Ne procrastination monkey LOVES CT a little too much!